When Kids Can’t Explain What’s Going On in Their Heads: A Parent’s Lesson
The first sign was the shuffle of sneakers on the kitchen floor. My daughter Maya, seven, dropped her backpack with a soft thud, then just stood there, staring at the refrigerator. Not crying, not frowning. Just standing.
“Hey, how was school?” I asked, the standard question that usually gets a half-hearted “fine” or a rambling story about who got to feed the class hamster.
“Fine,” she said. Then she walked to her room and closed the door.
We had pasta at six. She ate three bites, pushed the rest around, and asked to be excused. When I told her to put away the Legos scattered on the living room floor, she erupted. Not a mild complaint—a full-blown meltdown, complete with tears and throwing a single, dramatic Lego brick across the room. Over a clean-up request.
I felt the familiar frustration rising in my own chest. “Maya, this is just a few minutes of work. Why are you so upset about this?”
“I don’t know!” she wailed, which only made me more frustrated. She had to know. Everyone knows why they’re upset, right?
Here’s the thing I had to learn the hard way: kids don’t always know. They genuinely don’t.
That evening, after her tears had dried and she was lying on her bed trying to get her stuffed bunny to sit in exactly the right position, I sat on the edge of the mattress. “Was something hard today? At school?”
“No,” she mumbled, not looking at me.
“Did something happen at recess? With Lily or Emma?”
“No.” She tucked the bunny’s ear under its front paw.
I took a breath and tried a different tack, one I had read about but never really tried. “Okay, I’m going to make a guess. You don’t have to say yes or no. You can just squeeze my hand if I’m close.” I held out my hand. “I wonder if you felt tired today. Not sleepy tired, but just like your battery was low.”
No squeeze.
“Or maybe you felt frustrated about something in class, like you didn’t know the answer and didn’t want anyone to see?”
Instantly, her hand tightened around mine. A tiny nod followed.
It turns out that during their silent reading time, the teacher called on her to read a paragraph aloud, and she stumbled over the word “conversation.” A couple of kids giggled. She felt embarrassed, but she didn’t have the vocabulary to say, “I felt exposed in front of my peers, and that physical shame responses melted into a low-grade irritation that followed me home.” She just knew she felt bad. And when she feels bad, everything feels worse—including the Legos.
That moment changed how I ask my kids about their inner lives. I used to think that the problem was that they didn’t want to talk. But actually, the problem was that I was asking them to do something deeply complicated: to introspect, label an emotion, trace its trigger, and then articulate it in a calm, linear sentence. I struggle with that as an adult after a stressful workday. Why would I expect that from a seven-year-old?
Kids live in their bodies and their reactions. An emotion isn’t a neat label for them—it’s a messy storm. They feel hot. They feel tight. They feel like crying but don’t know why. When we ask “Why are you upset?” we’re essentially asking them to write an essay about a weather system they’re standing in the middle of.
What works better—what I’ve slowly been learning to do with both Maya and my four-year-old, Ben—is to lower the demand. Instead of asking for an explanation, I offer possibilities. “I wonder if you’re feeling…” is a magic phrase. It takes the pressure off. It’s not a test with a right answer. It’s a guess, and the child can accept it, reject it, or use it as a springboard to something closer to the truth.
I also started paying more attention to the physical signs. A stomachache at breakfast usually isn’t about the pancakes. Kicking the table leg during dinner might be about a kid who took his toy, not about the peas. When Ben collapses into a tantrum because the blue cup is dirty, I’ve learned to say, “You really wanted that cup. It feels unfair when we can’t have what we want.” That doesn’t stop the tantrum immediately, but it helps him feel understood. He calms down faster than when I say, “Don’t cry over a cup.”
Another thing that helps is using drawing or play. After the Lego incident, Maya drew a picture of her classroom one day. She wasn’t drawing her distress, but as she sketched the desks and the teacher’s desk, she pointed to a speech bubble that had “conversation” in it. “That’s where I got stuck,” she said matter-of-factly. She was able to communicate through the drawing in a way she couldn’t through conversation.
Parents and teachers often ask, “What can I say to get my child to open up?” But the better question is, “What can I do to make them feel safe enough to show me?” Sometimes that means abandoning the interrogation in the car on the way home and instead sitting on the floor and building with blocks. Sometimes it means just saying, “I can tell something is off. I’m here when you’re ready, and it doesn’t have to be in words.”
I’ve also learned to stop saying “Tell me what’s wrong” and start saying “I see you’re really upset” or “You seem quiet today.” Simple observations without a question mark. That gives the child space to correct me or to sit in their own feeling without being challenged. It’s less threatening and more inviting.
One teacher I spoke to uses a “feelings chart” in her classroom, but not the standard happy/sad/angry faces. She includes more precise words: overwhelmed, frustrated, anxious, disappointed, jealous, nervous. She noticed that once her students had the word “overwhelmed,” they started using it. “I’m overwhelmed,” a nine-year-old would say during a crowded transition. The label helped them access help.
That’s the key—it’s not about forcing kids to explain, it’s about giving them tools to express. A word can be a tool. So can a drawing. So can a hand squeeze. So can a simple guess.
I still mess up. Last week, Maya came home from a birthday party in a foul mood. I immediately asked, “What happened? Was it Max? Did he do something?” I was offering my guesses, but I was also jumping to conclusions. She clamped up even more. I had forgotten that my guesses can be leading, and sometimes they hear it as an accusation.
The better version is to offer a guess about the feeling, not about the event. Instead of asking, “Did Max tease you?” say, “I wonder if you feel frustrated. Or maybe sad.” Keep it about the internal state, not the external story. The story can come out later, once the feeling is acknowledged.
Now, when Maya is stuck and can’t explain, we often end up sitting side by side, not looking at each other. That helps. Eye contact can feel intense. We do “parallel talking,” where she plays with her dolls and I just talk softly about my own day, including a moment I felt embarrassed. Often, she starts to chime in with her own version.
It’s still messy. There are still evenings when I don’t crack the code and she goes to bed with a sigh, and I go to bed guessing. But I’ve let go of the idea that my job is to get her to explain herself clearly. My job is just to stay close, to keep offering safe openings, and to trust that the explanations come in their own time, in their own way—sometimes through a drawing, sometimes through a tearful ramble that starts with the Lego and ends with the classroom. And sometimes, just with a squeezed hand.
That’s okay. We’re both learning how to translate the language of the inside. We just use different dictionaries.
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